HR Internship at IOCL – Shruti’s Experience of Working in Training & Development
About the Author: Shruti Gandhi from Jankidevi Bajaj Institute Of Management Studies shares story of her HR internship at IOCL where she assisted in designing and delivering of training programs as well as employee engagement activities.
My summer internship was at Indian Oil Corporation Limited for a period of 2 months. I would like to thank Dr. T. J. Mathew, Director – JDBIMS for giving us an opportunity to explore and learn more about the functioning of organisations. I was working under Mr. Raju Advani who is the Chief Manager of Training & Development Department.
Let me start off by mentioning how I secured my position as an intern in IOCL. Every year a few students from our batch are shortlisted by the placement cell based on the student ranking and participation in co-curricular activities. I was the 2nd highest ranker of my batch and as I am elected as an Events Head of my college, by default I had 100% participation in all the events. Therefore I passed the first stage. The second stage was an interview round at IOCL where I got selected too after a Q&A session. Being calm, focused and confident while answering to the questions is a must in order to crack the interview!
My experience of working with this organisation was too good! Till now, Training and Development was a department towards which I was inclined because I found this sector interesting. But now, after all the experience of the actual working at the department, after fulfilling my responsibilities as an intern and after undertaking various functions, I’ve made a decision that T&D department is where I want to work in future.
Training is not just training a set of people on a particular topic, but it is also about understanding their needs and giving a touch to the employee’s lives in all the ways possible. My mentor, Mr. Raju Advani, is a perfect example for this. He is known for his best way of doing things. The trainings and the various employee engagement activities which I assisted in, gave me a whole new way of looking at the actual work of an HR.
Majorly, my responsibility as an intern was to work on the training programs and the employee engagement activities.
For training, I worked on two programs namely:
a. XtraPower Fleet Card Program
b. Strategic Location Management Programme for 1st time DRSM’s (Divisional Retail Sales Managers).
Both the training programs were conducted in IMCL (IndianOil Management Centre for Learning – Mumbai, India). In both the trainings, I worked from the need assessment part to the final feedback part including finalising the respective speaker according to the dates and all other formalities. The second training also included an OEL (Outdoor Experiential Learning) at Kolad for 4 days because I believe, “Experiential learning is the best way to have retention of your learning”. Here also, I assisted in undertaking all the activities and games based on team spirit, leadership etc. To make the training even better, I tried to convince my mentor to include a session on ‘Business Etiquette’ too, which would include card, dining, email, meeting, telephone, and speaking etiquette. He actually liked the request and to my surprise, we actually implemented it and called the famous Ms. Kavita Kapoor for undertaking the session!
My other part of work was on employee engagement programs. Here I worked on Environment Day celebration, Sports Conclave, and worked on feedback for Women’s Day celebration. As an add-on to this, I also worked on a project titled ‘Electronic Feedback Mechanism’, wherein I suggested my mentor an idea to replace paper based feedback form system with an ‘Audience Response System’ just like the ones used in KBC! This would be innovative, quick, and better to work on. This eliminates manual paper work, which helps to save cost and time. So I arranged meetings with the dealers for a demo.
This is how all my work got done and was appreciated at the end of my internship! This internship has truly made me much more capable than what I thought I could be. I would like to add that this internship is not done only for a certificate, but also because I wanted an experience of a corporate life. By working and facing situations, I have concluded that life is not a bed of roses. We all have to face struggles in life and shine from it.
So, I would like to say that these 2 months were full of learning from real experiences, inspiration from various personalities, many fun moments with the other interns from different locations of the country. This journey of internship has ended, but I am taking back some wonderful memories with me which I would cherish throughout my life! :)
Wish to make a career in HR for yourself? Check out these exciting HR internships and kickstart your journey.
